OXFORD, Miss. There's something about the road that can make a football coach whole. Down each stretch of highway lies hope, whether it's a huge game or a prized recruit or a better job.

Dan Werner knows the road as well as anyone, both as a program-builder and as a part of a BCS championship team. He has been conquering the road all his adult life; he was the son of a football coach. The road is in his blood.

Werner was the quarterbacks coach on the 2001 Miami Hurricanes team that some argue is the best college squad of all time. He was a part of three national-title staffs at Miami, which set him up for other chances, including the biggest chance of all the opportunity to be a head coach.

The road took him to FCS member Northwestern State (La.) early in 2009, where he took an offensive coordinator's job that might have led him to his first head-coaching job in a long career. Maybe, after 25 years, the road could make his career whole.

Then one morning on the road, his phone rang. He picked it up, and he stared in shock.

He had to turn around.

Mississippi offensive coordinator Dan Werner and his son Ian. On that February day three years ago, and on many days afterward, Dan Werner made a choice. It was not the choice a lot of coaches would make. It was not the kind of choice we're used to hearing about from big-time coaches.

It was far different from the choice Bobby Petrino made when he got on a motorcycle with a woman young enough to be his daughter. It was not like the choice Urban Meyer made when he quit his Florida job, then un-quit the next day. It was not like the choice your favorite coach makes when rather than going home, he sleeps on the couch in the office, remote control in his hand.

Werner did not make the kind of choice coaches make when they want to be successful at their jobs. Instead, he made a choice he knew probably would end up costing him the job he always dreamed of.

Dan Werner met Kim Hadder in 1993, at a party in Ruston, La., where he coached at Louisiana Tech. He immediately was impressed. She was a nanny for a new coach, and she knew football. That was going to be crucial if he was going to spend any real time with her.

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Father’s Day is bittersweet for Ole Miss assistant Dan Werner, single dad molded by football, tragedy